Re:Elvish – An experimental Unix shell in Go
by Dewie on Saturday July 26, 2014 @07:29PM
(#8091248)
> It attempts to exploit a facility Shell programmers are very familiar with, but virtually unknown to other programmers - the pipeline.
Really?
It seems that Unix pipes are the go-to example of what you might call pipeline programming, as if it originated there or because every programmer is a shell-programmer first and foremost. But I'm not sure that this is such a secret technique exclusive to shell programmers - object-oriented languages can and does seem to like to use "fluent interfaces", I think its called, which has the same pipelining style. Functional programmers are able to and probably find it convenient to use a "pipeline style" on longer expressions that are essentially long chains of function application or function composition - they just have to flip the order of the operators for function application and function composition, respectively. This is possible in languages like Haskell, and I think it is even pretty idiomatic in F#.
Really?
It seems that Unix pipes are the go-to example of what you might call pipeline programming, as if it originated there or because every programmer is a shell-programmer first and foremost. But I'm not sure that this is such a secret technique exclusive to shell programmers - object-oriented languages can and does seem to like to use "fluent interfaces", I think its called, which has the same pipelining style. Functional programmers are able to and probably find it convenient to use a "pipeline style" on longer expressions that are essentially long chains of function application or function composition - they just have to flip the order of the operators for function application and function composition, respectively. This is possible in languages like Haskell, and I think it is even pretty idiomatic in F#.